Rinko Kawauchi: Ametsuchi

Description

Rinko Kawauchi has gained international recognition for her nuanced, lushly colored images that offer closely observed fragments of everyday life. In her latest work, she shifts her attention from the micro to the macro. The title, "Ametsuchi," is composed of two Japanese characters meaning "heaven and earth," and is taken from the title of one of the oldest pangrams in Japanese-a chant in which each character of the Japanese syllabary is used. Translated loosely as "Song of the Universe," it comprises a list that includes the heavens, earth, stars and mountains. In "Ametsuchi," Kawauchi brings together images of distant constellations and tiny figures lost within landscapes, as well as photographs of a traditional controlled burn farming method ("yakihata") in which the cycles of cultivation and recovery span decades and generations. Punctuating the series are images of Buddhist rituals and other religious ceremonies-a suggestion of other means by which humankind has traditionally attempted to transcend time and memory. The book is designed by award-winning Dutch designer Hans Gremmen, who brings a sense of the monumental and the mysterious to the design, including a seductive origami binding. The series is Kawauchi's first to be fully realized with a medium-format, 4 x 5 camera, instead of the 2- -inch format for which she has become best known. And while her work has frequently touched on the ephemeral, often using tiny details as a point of access to the larger cycles of life, with this new body of work, she purposely concentrates on the elemental and universal. The book is designed by award-winning Dutch designer Hans Gremmen, who brings a sense of the monumental and the mysterious to the design, including a seductive origami binding that offers a hint at the spiritual and philosophical currents running throughout the work. As Gremmen explains, "the book is bound in a variation of Japanese binding. In regular Japanese binding you fold the paper in such a way that the sides are closed. In this book the closed side is at the top of the page; the sides and bottom are open. This results in a book that introduces a 'parallel world' on the inside of the pages, in which some images are printed in inverted colors. By inverting the images, the existential and poetic nature of Kawauchi's work is enlarged: fire turns into water, night turns into day."

Rinko Kawauchi studied graphic design and photography at Seian Junior college of Art and Design. Among her awards are the Kimura Ihei Photography Award (2002) and the International Center of Photography Infinity Award in Art (2009). She has had solo exhibitions at Fondation Cartier, Paris; Photographers' Gallery, London; Sao Paulo Museum of Modern Art; and Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, among other venues. She was one of four artists shortlisted for the 2012 Deutsche Boerse Photography Prize. Kawauchi lives and works in Tokyo. Rinko Kawauchi studied graphic design and photography at Seian Junior college of Art and Design. Among her awards are the Kimura Ihei Photography Award (2002) and the International Center of Photography Infinity Award in Art (2009). She has had solo exhibitions at Fondation Cartier, Paris; Photographers' Gallery, London; Sao Paulo Museum of Modern Art; and Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, among other venues. She was one of four artists shortlisted for the 2012 Deutsche Boerse Photography Prize. Kawauchi lives and works in Tokyo.

A fine-art photographer whose work often explores the minutiae of everyday life, Kawauchi broadens her canvas here; the title Ametsuchi is a Japanese character amalgam of 'heaven and earth.' Many of her landscapes depict zigzagging fire patterns - from yakihata farming, a traditional controlled burn method - that are more deliberate than they seem. Some shots depict tiny human figures dwarfed by vast natural backdrops. Other images show distant constellations, Buddhist rituals, cavernous mountain lakes, symmetrical and amorphous patterns found in nature-all indicating a search for order and beautty in a chaotic, mysterious world.--Jack Crager"American Photo" (07/07/2013)